Sensory Loss
by katecholamine
Summary: After the explosion at the compound and his first physical contact with Emily, Spencer experiences his colleague on an entirely new, completely sensory level. Rated M for explicit sexual content.
1. Introduction

He had never touched her until today.

He had thought about it, he had dreamed about it, he had fantasized about it, but he had never actually done it. Not until today.

Today, after the cult compound exploded behind him and he'd fallen into her embrace, he had allowed his arms to linger around her waist before she broke away to console one of the mothers whose daughter hadn't made it out alive. Today, after she grasped his hands in hers and reassured him that she'd made a choice in outing herself as an FBI agent and that she'd do it again, he had stroked his thumb against the back of her hand while they shared small, secret smiles.

The residual sensation of her body pressed against him, of her soft palms resting against his own, felt like a lingering electric force field that just wouldn't go away. Not when she stood up to use the bathroom, not when the BAU plane made its decent onto the runway, not when he grabbed his "go bag" and began to walk toward the parking lot in a daze.

Not until he heard her call his name.

"Spencer, wait up!"

She never used his first name. She'd only ever referred to him as Reid.

Surprised, he spun around and said, almost to himself, "Emily?" as he watched her break into a sprint, her jet black hair flying behind her and her breasts bobbing up and down against the confines of her dark sweater.

He swallowed hard, shaking his head, and fixed his gaze on the concrete below. Usually, he managed to suppress his attraction to his colleague when they were at work, but the sensory memory of those touches - those exquisite, brief touches - seemed to be burned onto his hippocampus. Which was why he needed to get home. And fast.

"It's been a difficult day for both of us," she said, ducking slightly so her hair fell across her face, partially obscuring the fresh bruises there. "Do you want to get a drink?"

His head snapped up instantly.

"Of coffee!" she added quickly, either clarifying or remediating her mistake. She knew that Spencer was in recovery. They all did. It was a time he didn't care to dwell upon further: a time when he was careless, indifferent, cruel. Even to Emily. No, especially to Emily.

And yet it was a time he couldn't possibly make up to her or even fully explain to her because if (as Agent Rossi claimed) we always hurt the ones we love, he'd never be able to tell her that he loved her.

"It's late," he replied hoarsely, in a voice not quite his own. "And spending all that time undercover has really made me miss being in my own apartment."

"You don't have coffee in your apartment?" she asked, biting her lower lip as though fully aware of the risk she was taking.

"It's a little late for coffee," he remarked, wondering if maybe - just maybe - the feeling of his skin against hers had affected her in the same way it had affected him.

Emily sighed. "I just ... I just don't want to be alone tonight, after everything that's happened. I thought maybe you'd feel the same way, but ..." Her sentence trailed off, leaving an awkward silence between them. "You know what? Forget it. Forget I asked. It's fine. I'll be fine."

The words escaped his throat before he had a chance to stop them. "No, it's OK. You can come over."

They drove to his apartment without a word passing between them. He would occasionally sneak glances over toward the passenger seat, but his companion continued to stare out the window, her expression blank. Spencer couldn't understand it - this was the independent, unshakable Emily Prentiss, after all - so why, after this case, did she suddenly need someone to be with her? Why did she need _him_ to be with her?

When they arrived, she finally broke the silence by asking him if she could take a shower. His groin reacted before his mouth, but he did manage to nod and point toward the bathroom. While the water was running, he couldn't prevent himself from imagining her soaping her toned arms, her perfect breasts, the triangle of hair between her legs ...

He tried to breathe. Just breathe. She'd be finished soon enough, and then he could do - well, then he could do what he needed to do. What he'd needed to do ever since he felt the curves of her body pressed hard against his own lean torso.

Emily emerged from the bathroom in a towel, explaining apologetically, "I wanted to change into some clean clothes and I left my go bag on your couch." He wasn't sure if he'd gasped at the appearance of her long legs, her cleavage, at the thought of all the areas that his fluffy beige towel barely covered ... No, he wasn't sure at all, but he was sure of one thing: he needed to relieve himself as soon as possible.

After she'd grabbed her black bag and, moments later, walked out wearing a casual Yale T-shirt and a pair of form-fitting jeans, he'd practically rushed into the bathroom, nearly slamming the door behind him. And then he saw them, casually flung onto the tile floor next to her go bag. He saw the red lacy panties she'd been wearing.

Before he was fully aware of what he was doing, he picked them up and held them to his nose, inhaling deeply. My God. It was like nothing he'd ever smelled before. It was like the most delicious perfume in the entire world.

He dropped the panties on the dresser next to the sink and turned the shower on with his left hand while rapidly unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants with his right, his cock angry and throbbing against the confines of his underwear. By the time he pulled it out, it was already so lubricated with pre-come that, as he picked up her panties and held them to his nose, he didn't even have to spit in his hand before rubbing himself furiously, hoping that the noise from the shower was sufficiently loud enough to obfuscate the slap-slap-slapping sound of his closed fist thrusting up and down against himself.

Curious, his tongue darted out to taste the origin of that tart scent and - imagining that it was her body rather than merely some silken material that had recently covered her body - he felt it rising within him, approaching so fast he barely had time to point his cock toward the sink where the residue of his shame could be easily washed away, and suddenly, almost out of nowhere, he was coming. Coming and coming and coming, groaning as thick white spurts of semen jetted out of him, his balls contracting repeatedly, his vision becoming hazy and his ears ringing as the powerful, unprecedented orgasm overtook him like a volcano erupting for the very first time.

When it was over, he dropped her panties on the floor and grasped the sink with one hand to prevent himself from falling down, light-headed from the unprecedented, dizzying power of his orgasm.

And when he raised his eyes to glance in the mirror before climbing into the shower, he saw something so unexpected, so unimaginable, he had to blink several times to make sure it was real.

Yes, it was real.

It was really Emily Prentiss, standing there in the doorway of that bathroom with a shocked expression on her face, staring at the limp cock he was still holding in his hand.


	2. Vision

He rushed into the shower, wincing as the scalding water hit his back before he had a chance to adjust the temperature.

Still, the stabbing pain from those droplets against his skin wasn't sufficiently agonizing to compete with the horrifying, visceral sense of shame and humiliation he felt knowing that Emily had been watching him jerk off into the sink while he held her panties to his nostrils.

"Reid?"

Her voice was surprisingly gentle, even kind. He was not about to let that voice trick him into forgiving her, not after the reservations he'd had from the very beginning about allowing her into his apartment, into his most private space. She had violated that space from the moment she'd first touched him at the compound and on the plane, and it was going to end. It was going to end right now.

"Spencer, I know I shouldn't have watched you like that. I thought you were in the shower, but when I opened the door to grab my hairbrush, I saw you there and I just ... wanted to see more." Emily paused, and when there was no response from behind the shower curtain, she added, "There's nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. I mean, we all do it. It's human."

Her casual "we all do it" resulted in an unwanted stirring in his groin, which only strengthened his resolve to get her out of there - and the sooner, the better.

"There's a card for a taxi service on my desk," he replied tonelessly. "They can take you home from here."

Even over the loud drumming of the shower, he could hear her exasperated sigh. "Did you ever notice how sometimes this job takes over our entire lives and turns us into these unemotional, one-dimensional versions of ourselves? How, because of this job, we're essentially conditioned to suppress all of our fears and desires, and how that spills over into our personal lives, too?"

"Maybe for you," he snapped angrily. "But when I'm at work, I'm just me. I don't need to suppress anything."

This, of course, was a bold-faced lie. He understood the concept of suppression better than perhaps anyone else on the team, since he was the only one who was forced on a daily basis to suppress his emotions - his fears and desires, as she'd worded it - for the woman he'd been hopelessly in love with since the moment he watched her walk through the door at the BAU, for the infatuation that had only grown stronger over time.

"If I leave now, we are never going to be able to work together again," Emily told him quietly. "You do know that, don't you?"

An unexpected panic ran through him in rivers. He hadn't thought about that. About how, if he couldn't look at her now, he'd never be able to look at her again. About how, if they didn't talk about what happened, they'd never be able to talk to one another again. No, he couldn't have that. He couldn't lose her like that. He'd always known he could never have her in the way he desperately wanted to have her, but now he realized with sudden clarity that he could also never handle losing what they did have. Because as small and insignificant as it might be to her, it was everything to him.

Reluctantly, he turned the shower off and asked her to wait in the bedroom while he got dressed. He toweled himself off, self-hatred flooding his synapses when the lightest touch of the soft material against his genitals prompted yet another erection, one that didn't diminish even against the tight briefs he'd hoped would contain it. Gritting his teeth, he pulled on an oversized CalTech T-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants, closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing until he felt himself softening, comforted by the knowledge that, if he did become physically aroused again, the evidence would remain hidden under his clothing. Hidden from Emily.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight he witnessed when he walked out of the bathroom: Emily, with her jeans and panties crumpled on the floor next to his bed and her grey college T-shirt pushed up to reveal everything from her smooth stomach down to her gazelle legs ... and then there was her finger. Her finger rubbing small, slow circles against her clit.

He found himself incapable of speech, his jaw dropping and eyes widening in shock and confusion. The way she was touching herself so casually, the way her straight white teeth were biting down on her pouty lower lip, the way her dark brown eyes didn't waver from his gaze for a moment, stunned him.

"I thought that maybe if you watched me," she finally explained in a husky voice, "you'd be less embarrassed about me watching you. That we'd be even."

At that moment, transfixed by the sight of her openly masturbating on his bed, he didn't care about being watched and he certainly didn't care about being even.

All he cared about was seeing more.

He was rock-hard as he watched her, his balls as heavy as an overpacked grocery bag, pre-come dripping from his dick like a leaky faucet.

After about five minutes of watching her finger drawing tight, pressured circles around her clit, she groaned, "This isn't going to work."

The wounded dismay that stung him to his core must have shown on his face, because she quickly continued, "I'm a very ... visual person. I usually close my eyes and fantasize about something. But I don't want to close my eyes. So I need you to be my visual stimulation."

His heartbeat accelerated and insecurity struck him like a lightning bolt. What, exactly, did she want him to do?

"I want you to touch yourself while you watch me. I want to watch you touching yourself while you watch me." Her tone was so matter-of-fact, so breezily indifferent, that it took him off-guard. Then again, he was practically bursting through the confines of his clothing already ...

Self-consciously, he pulled down his sweatpants and his briefs and allowed his cock to spring free, sighing in relief. When he tentatively glanced up at her, the mere effect of seeing his body had clearly affected her: she let out a small whimper and began to increase the pace of her finger against herself.

Not wanting to come too soon - terrified of coming too soon - he kept his eyes fixed on her as he slowly ran his right hand from the base of his cock to the tip and back down again, briefly cupping his balls when the sensation proved to be too much.

It seemed to him that they took their cues from one another: he would increase the speed of his hand against himself and then she would increase the rhythmic pressure against herself. He would pause to stroke himself more slowly, and she would switch to a less frantic, feather-like touch.

He tried to make it last - to make himself last - as long as possible, but after only a few minutes had elapsed, he knew his orgasm was imminent and he ceased to care about waiting for her. He jerked faster, his closed fist flying against his cock, his breathing ragged and unsteady, as he felt it beginning to build within him.

And that was when Emily moaned loudly, her body arching off of the comforter and her legs trembling. It wasn't until the glorious first throb of warmth escaped him that he realized she hadn't yet reached orgasm; as he shuddered and squirted onto the edge of the bed below him, he saw her eyes close and her whole body quake erratically while clear liquid glistened at her opening. He struggled to keep his eyes open, watching in fascination as she came. And came. And came again.

By the time she was finished, he'd already pulled his underwear and sweatpants back on, the sticky residue from failing to wipe himself off cooling and hardening in his briefs.

She was staring at the ceiling, trying to catch her breath, when he lowered himself onto the bed beside her, unsure of what to do next. Should he kiss her? Cuddle with her? Talk to her?

All of those options seemed desirable.

Emily, however, shifted into a sitting position and reached for her panties and jeans. "I really needed that after a day like today," she told him, glancing at him for a moment. "Much more relaxing than a cup of coffee."

He flinched. Was that all it was to her? A way to unwind? An alternative to coffee?

"Don't you want to - I mean, don't women like to ... afterward, I mean -" he stuttered.

The look she gave him made him feel like a pathetic teenager. "Oh, Spencer, you're so cute."

Cute? He was so cute? His face blushed crimson at the back-handed compliment.

"Look, all we did was something we would have already been doing on our own. We just did it together. No big deal, right?" Emily shrugged indifferently and stood up to zip and button her jeans.

No big deal, right? Right?

Wrong.

It was a big deal. It was a big deal to him. How did she, a seasoned profiler with the FBI, fail to see that? How did she, a human being, fail to understand that?

But before he could find the courage to ask, she was already on her BlackBerry, arranging a car service to drive her home.

"See you tomorrow," she called over her shoulder after collecting her go bag from the bathroom and walking out the front door with a grateful smile.

And, more than anything else he'd seen that day, the image of her leaving so abruptly was the one that remained with him as he shut off the lights and tried to fall asleep.

Because it wasn't watching Emily come that had affected him so profoundly.

It was watching her go.


	3. First Interlude

He was sweating when he first walked into the FBI headquarters; since Friday, his emotions had alternated between arousal, anger, confusion, and jealousy. After mentally replaying his interaction with Emily over and over and over again, he'd become convinced that she must have done this before. Perhaps with another teammate. Most likely with another teammate. Otherwise, how could she have treated what happened between them like it was nothing? How could she have treated him like _he _was nothing?

The most obvious candidate was, of course, Derek Morgan. When he first saw Derek sitting in his cubicle, with that bright white grin above that chiseled jaw, leaning back with his buff arms crossed behind his head, his initial feelings of rage gave way to insecurity. Because he knew - he just knew - that he could never compete with his colleague's sexual bravado, his panty-dropping sweet talk, and (if the stories were true) his confidence and experience with women.

"Morgan, can I -" he swallowed hard. "Can I ask you something?"

A flicker of concern crossed Morgan's face before he answered quietly, "You know you can ask me anything, Pretty Boy. So what's up?"

"Have you ever ... been with Emily?"

Morgan broke out in laughter, slamming his hands against his desk as he hooted, "You're kidding, right?"

Kidding? Why would he be kidding? Hesitantly, he shook his head.

Derek leaned in and said in a low voice, "Listen, man, Emily's a dyke."

A _what?_ No, that wasn't possible. If so, how could she have ...

The shocked disbelief must have shown on his face, because Morgan asked, "You want to know how I know?" Spencer nodded numbly. "OK, so this one time, we were out together. Having drinks, dancing, flirting. The way she was acting, I really thought it was gonna be a sure thing. But when I suggested moving the party back to my place, she actually laughed. Looked down at my crotch and said, 'You're really not my type, Derek, if you catch my drift.' I didn't make her spell it out or anything but it was pretty obvious." Morgan shrugged. "Hey, her personal life is her business. But if she didn't play for the other team, you _know _I'd be hittin' that like a hammer."

Although partially relieved by Morgan's antidote, he was now more confused than ever. If Emily was, indeed, a lesbian, then why did watching him provide her with "visual stimulation," as she'd put it, turn her on so much? Of course, he also knew that most women did not fall on either extreme of the sexuality spectrum so it was entirely possible that she could become aroused by men and yet choose to engage in relationships or sexual encounters solely with other women. Was that why she didn't permit him to touch her afterward? Why she'd walked out of his apartment as though nothing had happened?

From the corner of his eye, he saw JJ on the phone in her office, flipping back her blonde hair, a serious expression on her face. True, JJ was straight - but he distinctly remembered the time she'd admitted to "experimenting" with another woman in college during a drunken game of Twenty Questions. He also distinctly remembered the fascination on Emily's face as JJ described the experience.

Climbing the stairs, his heartbeat pounding, he tentatively knocked on JJ's door before she peered through the blinds and waved him in. "Yes, sir. The briefing will be ready by this afternoon, sir. Enjoy your son's soccer game." She hung up the phone and sighed, shifting through a pile of files on her desk before glancing up at him. "What's up, Spence?"

"Can I close the door?" he asked.

He noticed the very same concern that had crossed Morgan's face only moments earlier reflected in her sky blue eyes. "Of course," she responded quickly. "Is everything OK? Are you OK? I know that what happened at the compound last week must have ..."

He shook his head as he turned to shut the door behind him, stopping her mid-sentence. "This isn't about the compound. This is about something else."

JJ sat down in her chair behind the desk and gestured for him to sit down as well. "You have my undivided attention. So what's going on?"

Lowering himself into the seat across from her, he mumbled, "I was just wondering if you and Emily have ever ... been together."

"What? No!" she exclaimed reflexively, before her eyes drifted away from him and she paused. "Well ..."

He sat up intently, preparing himself for the worst.

"One night, right after she first joined the BAU, we went to this bar and by the end of the night, we were both wasted. I mean, _wasted_. So this guy offered to pick up our bar tab - which was pretty substantial, by the way - if we'd make out for a full minute." JJ pursed her pink lips, smiling briefly.

"And?"

"And we did." JJ's eyes rolled up toward the ceiling as she groaned, "Oh my God, I cannot believe I just told you about that."

"Did you ... I mean, afterward ... Did you two ... ?" he stammered, blushing.

"No!" she insisted emphatically. "No! I'm straight, Emily's straight, and it was just some stupid show for all the guys watching us. I took a cab home and Emily went home with the guy who'd made the offer."

"She did?"

"Don't sound so surprised, Spencer. I thought you knew."

It was as though a boulder had been launched into his chest. "Knew what?" he squeaked out.

"Knew that Emily's whole shtick is sex without emotional attachment. The number of guys I've seen her go home with over the years ..." JJ's voice trailed off. "Personally, I think it's pretty sad. But we all deal with heartbreak differently, I guess. Her way of dealing with it is by having one-night stands."

"Heartbreak?" he repeated, taken aback.

"I've been trying to get her to open up about it for _years _now," JJ said, reaching for her coffee cup and taking a huge gulp. "But all she'll tell me is that she's in love with someone she can't have. My guess is that he's either married or someone from her past." She paused and cocked her head slightly. "Why, exactly, are you so interested in Emily's sex life?"

The lies poured out of him like a sudden torrent of rain. "Well, Morgan told me that Em- that Prentiss is a lesbian and I couldn't believe I hadn't picked up on it after all this time."

JJ almost choked on her coffee. "She must not have told him," she mused to herself.

"Told him what?"

"Oh, just her two rules: she won't sleep with teammates because it complicates the professional relationship and she won't sleep with virgins because they end up wanting more than just a one-night stand." JJ shrugged, trying to hide the judgmental twitch that appeared for a micro-second in the corner of her mouth. "Listen, I've got a briefing to prepare, so ..."

He nodded and walked out of her office, catching Emily's guilty eyes on his way back to the bullpen. Even though they hadn't slept together, Spencer suddenly understood her "rules" about colleagues and virgins with devastating clarity.

Because not only had their professional relationship become extraordinarily, inexplicably complicated, but now he was desperate for more than just one night with her. He couldn't go back to jerking off in the shower while imagining them together like he'd done for years: every time he closed his eyes, he saw her touching herself right in front of him like she'd done on Friday night. He'd found that he was utterly incapable of fantasizing about her anymore because reality kept breaking through and tormenting him.

In the midst of this stream-of-consciousness emotional tirade, he'd failed to notice that Emily had continued staring at him with those dark, dilated pupils. After he met her gaze, she dipped a finger in her coffee and put it in her mouth, suggestively sucking on it while training her eyes on his crotch.

He whirled around. He was determined to stay away from her, this woman who used men and then threw them away like they were trash._ It meant nothing to her,_ he reminded himself angrily, _and _you_ meant nothing to her, either._

The only problem? It still meant everything to him.

She still meant everything to him.


	4. Smell

It had been one of the hardest weeks of his life. In more ways than one.

At work, he was forced into a role of concerted, withdrawn professionalism: as the team examined evidence from their upcoming case in New York, trying to compile a profile while also trying to convince the territorial NYPD to let them assist in solving the string of race-based murders in NYC and the outer boroughs, he refused to interact with Emily on even the smallest level. He didn't look at her. He didn't speak to her. He didn't respond to her statistical questions about racially-motivated violence in the area until Hotch prompted him.

And at home, he seemed perpetually plagued by a throbbing erection that he also refused to acknowledge. The warm gush of the shower against his naked body, the soft sensation of his bedsheets rubbing against him as he tossed and turned in perpetual insomnia, the images of Emily masturbating in his bed that attacked his amygdala whenever he closed his eyes ... No, until (unless) he could wipe those memories from his brain, he was not going to give into his primitive, pathetic urges.

One week after their encounter and two days before the team was scheduled to fly to New York, Emily called in sick. Her uncharacteristic absence from work both perplexed and concerned everyone: Emily never missed a day of work. Never. Once she even came to work with the flu and kept emphatically protesting that she was fine until Hotch's suggestion that she go home turned into an order.

Inexplicably, he found himself covering for her. "You know, sir," he mused to his boss, "those bruises on her cheek were really much worse than they appeared on the surface. It's possible she was asked to have a MRI before returning to the field."

During a late lunch break, he sent her a text message.

**Spencer Reid:** I told Hotch you were prob. making sure Cyrus didn't fracture any bones in your face. Where are you?

A moment later, his BlackBerry vibrated with a response.

**Emily Prentiss:** Thx, cutie. Gonna leave a pkg for u w ur doorman about an hr before u get home  
**Emily Prentiss:** Wait till u get upstairs to open it  
**Spencer Reid:** ... ?  
**Emily Prentiss:** U will see - thx again for the cover  
**Spencer Reid:** No problem.

This was precisely why Spencer loathed text messages: not only because of the poor grammar and "net-speak" abbreviations, but because they didn't resemble the kind of actual conversation he would have had with her if they'd been talking on the phone or in person. Like, _hey, Emily, did you wake up in some stranger's bed, too hungover and sore from fucking all night to make it into work?_

All day, he waited anxiously for 6 p.m. when he could get in his car, drive home, and find out what kind of package Emily had planned to deliver to him. His limbs were restless, his mind unfocused, and even the cups of coffee he gulped down as though they were water didn't help him in sustaining his attention on the case.

His teammates apparently concluded that Spencer must merely be "gun shy" about returning to the field after his experience undercover at the cult compound, and he was more than willing to indulge this interpretation. He entirely lost count of the number of times he uttered the words "I'm fine" that day, something that would have annoyed him on a typical day - yet, of course, there was absolutely nothing typical about this day. Still, when Hotch promised to keep him in a behind-the-scenes role unless absolutely necessary once they arrived in New York on Monday, he was strangely relieved, knowing he wouldn't be required to have Emily's back in a conflict situation; after all, he did possess enough self-awareness to realize that his emotions were running far too high and that all objectivity had long been lost.

On the drive home, he allowed himself to indulge in a small fantasy that maybe Emily herself would be the package waiting for him in his lobby, that he would take her upstairs and make love to her, secretly knowing that if she'd broken two of her "rules," then she must have feelings for him, too.

But once he reached his apartment complex, he was almost disappointed to see the small cardboard package with his name and apartment number scrawled on the top in permanent marker.

"Dropped off for you about 45 minutes ago," said Ricky, one of the doormen. "A woman with black hair and brown eyes. Had a FBI badge. You expectin' something?"

Spencer nodded in response. Routine procedure was to immediately re-route all suspicious packages to the local police department, but Emily's forethought in flashing her credentials had stalled the doorman. He was grateful for that, since the contents of this mysterious delivery had transformed from mild curiosity into a near-frenzied obsession over the course of the day.

He must have hit the "up" button on the elevator at least five times before it finally appeared in the lobby. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone entering the building and briefly chatting with the doorman; ordinarily, he'd make sure to hold the doors for anyone who might be getting on, but today he pressed "close" repeatedly until the doors shut and he was headed to his floor, sweat breaking out across his forehead from anxiety and anticipation.

Once inside his apartment, he ripped the brown tape off the package with his hands, animalistic in his need to reach its contents. After unfolding the cardboard and peering inside, he dropped it on the kitchen table and stepped away with a ragged, shocked gasp.

Inside were four pairs of panties, each accompanied by a post-it note: the pink ones, "masturbated in these at approx. 10:45 am after fantasizing and denying myself pleasure since 8 am;" the white ones, "masturbated in these at approx. 12 pm after showering;" the red ones, "masturbated in these at approx. 2 pm after getting your text message;" and finally, the black ones, "masturbated in these at approx. 4 pm but clitoris so sore had to give myself a g-spot orgasm instead."

The idea of Emily kneeling on her bed with her fingers shoved deep inside her pussy, rocking back and forth until she exploded into the sticky black panties below nearly sent him over the edge without even having to touch himself.

Thoughts flew through his brain, but with the tangy, almost fruity scent wafting out of the box and into his nasal cavities, he could only focus on his desire: his desire to breathe in that smell and envision her masturbating, over and over again, throughout the day ... his desire to imagine his own nostrils merely inches from her dripping wet cunt as she touched herself ...

Without hesitation, he picked up each pair and inhaled deeply; the last one had a different, almost ammonia-like scent mixed in with the hardened white saccharine residue smeared on the cotton crotch of the other three. And it was still moist to the touch. This was the pair he clutched against his face with his left hand, burying himself in that strong smell, while he unbuttoned and unzipped his pants with his right, pulling down both the brown corduroys and his white briefs until they'd dropped just below his knees. There was no time to remove his shoes or disrobe completely: his cock was already pointing straight up at his face, pre-come drizzling from the tip. When he placed his hand on himself and breathed in her scent, allowing his tongue to dart out and taste the soft material against his lips, he only had to squeeze himself twice before he began spewing long strings of come across the table and onto the floor. After denying himself pleasure for so long, compounded by the additional stimulation of Emily's panties stuffed into his open mouth, he nearly blacked out from the sheer amount and force of each ejection. His mind was blank, save for a few images that only served to prolong his orgasm: watching Emily touch herself on his bed, imagining her coming just as instantly and as forcefully after waiting hours to masturbate, the liquid gushing out from inside of her as she finger-fucked herself ...

When he was finished, his vision had turned black and his ears were ringing. Light-headed, he stumbled to his bed and collapsed on it, waiting for his heart rate to drop back down below 140 beats per minute, waiting for his vision and hearing to gradually return so he could stand up and grab a glass of water for his parched mouth without fainting. The one sense he kept with him was the sense of her smell, her panties still pressed up against his nostrils.

He frantically rubbed himself to orgasm three more times that night, the same number of times that Emily had. And, like her, he'd discovered by the fourth time that his cock was so sore it was painful. So, laying down on the bed with her third pair of panties draped across his face, he just repetitively pressed two fingers against the sensitive area between his cock and his anus while slowly and gently stroking himself. It worked: even though it was a dry orgasm, his cock twitched and throbbed from a place much deeper within him, a place that propelled him into infinity, where nothing in the world existed except the endless pleasure pounding throughout his whole body.

Finally, limp and exhausted, he fell asleep, surrounded by Emily's panties, still breathing in her intoxicating scent and pretending (as he clutched the pillow next to him against his body) that she was really there with him, pretending that this was more than just some bizarre sex game, pretending that he could have more than just a visual and olfactory memory of her to hold onto.

Pretending, most of all, that she was in love with him, too.


	5. Second Interlude

When he woke up on Saturday morning with the intoxicating scent of Emily's panties resonating throughout the apartment like some kind of air freshener, he knew he couldn't wait until Monday to see her, to talk to her, to confront her. After all, it wasn't exactly like he could casually mention the package she'd delivered to him while they were sitting on the BAU plane en route to New York, surrounded by the entire team.

Remembering how she had insisted that they couldn't work together again if they didn't talk about how she'd watched him jerking off with her underwear almost made him laugh. Almost. Not only because they'd never talked about it, but because all of her actions since then - masturbating in front of him, insisting he join her, being absent from work, and giving him the unwashed panties she'd been wearing as she touched herself throughout the day - just further impeded their capacity to work together.

And she knew it.

How could she _not_ know it?

Spencer picked up his BlackBerry with trembling fingers and dialed her number. He hadn't yet planned what to say to her, but any rehearsed speech would have gone out the window the second he heard her sleepy "Hello? Spencer?" on the other end of the line, anyway.

"Are you alone?" he demanded.

"Wha -? Of course I'm alone. Why would you think ..."

Anger. The one emotion he'd suppressed until now. He wasn't about to play the hurt, lovesick, lonely virgin for her. Not today. Not anymore.

"I've been hearing some stories about you," he interrupted through gritted teeth. "From JJ. Stories about the numerous one-night stands you've had over the years. Stories about your 'rules' regarding sleeping with your colleagues and sleeping with virgins. I guess those rules don't apply to mutual masturbation or packages containing your discarded underwear, though, do they?"

There was a long sigh on the other end of the line. "I swear, I was going to tell you."

"Tell me what? How you get off on using guys? How it's not about the sex or the pleasure but the power? The power of knowing the effect you can have on another human being? The power of having total control? The power of always, always being the one who stays at a distance, who leaves without a second thought as to what they might be feeling?" His voice choked on that last question, remembering what it felt like to watch Emily walk out of his apartment after her orgasm as though it was nothing, as though _he_ was nothing.

His outburst was followed by a period of brief silence. When she finally spoke, he could tell from the periodic breaks in her voice and the ragged inhalations of her breath, that she was crying.

"Spencer, when I was a teenager, moving from city to city and country to country, I was so desperate to fit in, so desperate to have friends and to be liked, but I never was. I was always an outsider. Until we were stationed in Paris. One of the girls there told me that the easiest way to gain acceptance was by finding the most popular boy and sleeping with him. So I did. And he passed me around to his friends like I was some kind of toy. In the beginning, I hated myself for what I was doing but after a while, I managed to convince myself that it was just survival. And I guess it was. Because at every new school I attended, it was the same thing, over and over and over again. Until I got to college. I was paired to work on my freshman year thesis with this guy. Jeremy. He wasn't popular and he wasn't ... well, he wasn't experienced, if you know what I mean ... and gradually, over the course of that semester, we fell in love."

"What happened?" Spencer asked quietly.

"I'd avoided sleeping with him because I had so many bad memories of high school, but one night, right before Thanksgiving break, we were in my dorm room doing research and ... and we started kissing, and it just felt right. It was his first time and I'll never forget how, afterward, he held me in his arms and told me he'd love me for the rest of his life. I told him the same thing. God, I'd never felt so safe before. And he taught me how to enjoy sex, how to open up to another person, how to give and receive not only pleasure but _love_. Until, about a month before the end of the second semester, I showed up at his dorm and he was there with another girl. They were in his bed, naked. And I felt more used than I'd ever felt with any of those guys in high school. I felt like I was just a means to an end, just a way to teach him how to have sex so he could lose his virginity and move on. Even if that wasn't his intention in the beginning. So I ..." She stopped and swallowed hard. "I dropped the class, which meant accepting a failing grade, and I moved off-campus so I wouldn't have to see him around anymore. And I made a promise to myself that my education and my work would always come first, that I'd never allow personal feelings to get in the way of those things again. I also made a promise that I would never, ever, ever get involved with another virgin, because they don't know how to distinguish between sex and love."

"But you said he loved you first!" Spencer interjected, almost desperately. "You said -"

"You're right. And I think he did love me before we ever slept together. But that night, the night we broke up, he also said since I'd been the one who taught him how to be with someone, how to have fulfilling sex with someone, he'd never be sure if he loved me for that reason alone. He'd never stop wondering about what it was like to be with other women. And it wasn't 'fair' to me to be with someone who would always have that nagging curiosity in his mind."

"Did you ever see him again?" Spencer wondered aloud.

"Yeah." Emily laughed harshly. "I saw him on campus a few times during my sophomore year and always managed to avoid him, until one night when I was studying late in the library. He came up to me and apologized. He wanted a second chance. Apparently, he'd realized that he was in love with me after all - it just took cheating on me and then sleeping with a bunch of other people for a year before he knew it. I packed up my books and stormed out of there as fast as I could. And I convinced myself that if I kept my promises about never having sex with colleagues or virgins, I would never have to go through that kind of heartbreak again."

He winced, wondering if she had any idea how her actions had only compounded his heartbreak, the heartbreak of being forced to work with her on a daily basis while being helplessly, hopelessly in love with her.

"And the one-night stands made even more sense after I joined the BAU. I mean, how could I expect anyone to understand how much I love my job? How could I justify needing to leave on a whim to chase some serial killer in the Midwest? So spending the night with someone just allows me to experience sexual gratification without any expectation of a long-term emotional commitment."

"And that works for you?" Spencer questioned incredulously.

"For a long time, it worked for me," Emily whispered, almost to herself. "It doesn't work so well for me anymore."

"Why?" he wanted to know.

She didn't answer.

"Why, Emily? Why doesn't it work for you anymore?"

"Because ... because I fell in love."

A sharp stab of pain hit his heart like a knife. "You fell in love? Do I know him? Is it someone on the team? Is it Morgan? Hotch? Who is he?" he asked, the questions spewing from his mouth like a torrent of gunfire. "Who is he, Emily? Who did you fall in love with?"

"Spencer, it's you. I fell in love with you."


	6. Hearing

He couldn't believe what he'd just heard, what she'd just confessed. Was this some kind of trick on her part? Some misguided way of eschewing responsibility for her highly-inappropriate actions over the past week? Or was it a calculated attempt to drive him away, believing that his feelings for her were merely sexual in nature, and that lying about being in love with him would be the surest and fastest way to abruptly end these regrettable games between them? Was it really possible that she could be so utterly clueless about his long-standing love for her?

Either way, it wasn't fair to him. Emily knew that his sole encounter with another woman had occurred several years earlier, before she'd joined the BAU, and that it was limited to making out in a pool with an actress he'd been assigned to protect from a stalker. And yet he was forced to acknowledge that kissing Lila had felt more real, more reciprocal, than anything he'd experienced with Emily over this past week. Because none of it had truly been "with Emily," after all.

His inner monologue was interrupted when Emily coughed and gently prodded, "Spencer, this is the part where you're supposed to confess that you're in love with me, too."

He froze.

She knew. Of course she knew. His lingering sidelong glances, the blush that covered his face whenever she teased him, his intellectual over-compensation during their conversations ... She was a profiler. How had he ever managed to delude himself into thinking that she was so completely unaware of his feelings for her?

But how could he, as a profiler, have been so completely unaware of _her_ feelings for _him?_

"I - I - what?" he stammered.

"It's been pretty obvious for a while now, Spencer," she noted in her characteristically detached tone, a tone he absolutely loathed. Especially at this moment.

"And ... And you?" he asked, incapable of preventing the myriad of emotions from creeping into his voice.

"I'm the one that everyone always accuses of compartmentalizing, remember?" Emily paused for a moment and exhaled ruefully. "Until the explosion at the compound. Until I thought I'd lost you for good."

"So you decided you'd have some meaningless sexual encounter with me and ... what? Make it all go away? See me as just another one-night stand?" His whole body was shaking with resentment, with anger. "Despite knowing what you claim to know about me, you made the selfish decision to come to my apartment and try to eradicate your own feelings for me without even caring about the effect it might have on me? On the person you're supposedly in love with?"

"I didn't intend for any of this to happen," she insisted vehemently. "Do you know what I _really_ wanted that night? I wanted to sit on your couch and watch some foreign film with you while I mustered up the courage to ask you if it would be OK if you put your arms around me and ... and held me. I wanted to lay my head on your shoulder until I felt safe enough to fall asleep. That's it. That's what I wanted that night."

He'd had enough of this, enough of her lies. "But that _could_ have been what happened, Emily!" he yelled explosively. "You could have just closed the bathroom door instead of watching me! Or you could have talked to me about it instead of taking your clothes off, masturbating on my bed, and insisting that I join you! And most of all? You could have stayed afterward instead of immediately calling a cab and making me feel like I'd just hired some ten-dollar hooker!"

"But I -" she started to say before he abruptly cut her off.

"And you still could have talked to me privately about what happened instead of sending me a package with your used underwear! If I hadn't mentioned talking to JJ about your habitual promiscuity, can you really tell me that you would have been honest with me for maybe the first time since we've known each other? Well? Can you?"

"Will you just give me a chance to explain?" she responded, almost pleading.

"Fine."

"First of all, I never meant to watch you that night. It all happened so fast, before I had a chance to shut the door. And then I thought about how turned on I was, how there was no way I could ever sit so close to you and watch some movie with you or even hold a conversation with you, not in that state ... So I decided to do something I haven't allowed myself to do since college. I decided to let another person - to let you - watch me have an orgasm."

"Oh, so now we're going to pretend like JJ was lying to me about all the one-night stands?" he asked incredulously.

"Spencer, I don't ... I don't let them make me come. If they're insistent about it, I fake it. It's too personal. It's too intimate. Having no control over yourself and letting someone else see you at your most vulnerable ... That takes trust. That takes a lot of trust. For me, at least." She inhaled deeply. "Right after I let you watch me, I guess I kind of panicked. And that panic only worsened throughout the week, when you wouldn't speak to me, wouldn't even _look_ at me. I didn't know how to talk to you about it, so I figured that if I sent you ... the package I sent you ... then it would force you to talk to me about it. I was awake all night waiting for your call. When I didn't hear from you, I assumed you'd just thrown them away and that I'd blown it. For good."

"I didn't throw them away," he blurted out. "I ... I used them."

Oh, shit. Why had he just admitted that to her?

"Really?" she wanted to know, a kind of forlorn hope creeping into her voice.

Mortified, he muttered a barely-audible answer to her. "Um, yes. Really."

"What were you thinking about?" she asked in a husky voice.

Despite the stirring in his groin, he replied sarcastically, "Really, Emily? You really want to do this now?"

"Do what now?"

"I don't know ... Have phone sex or whatever ... You really want to do that right now?" Regardless of his harsh tone, saying those words aloud caused him to stiffen almost uncomfortably against the confines of his briefs.

"I just wanted to know what you were thinking about, but if you want to have phone sex ..." Her sentence trailed off into the air.

Of course, at this point, he did want to. Badly. "I wouldn't know what to say," he admitted, flustered.

"Then I'll start," she said eagerly, before he had an opportunity to interrupt. "I'm imagining ... you kissing me. Your hot tongue in my mouth. Kissing my neck before moving back up to my mouth. Sucking on my earlobes. Biting them. Gently. Then back to my mouth. And you're on top of me, grinding slowly back and forth. Mmmmm, I can feel you through our clothes. You're running your hands over my breasts. Softly. My nipples are so hard." There was a moment of silence before Spencer heard the distinct rustling of covers. Emily was touching herself on the other end of the line.

"Wh- what if I wanted to see them?" he asked, waiting until she began speaking to discreetly remove his briefs and place his hand on his cock.

"I'd pull off my shirt and let you touch them. You'd ... use your fingers first ... and then your mouth."

"On your breasts or your nipples?" he questioned, hating himself for playing along while still wanting to know as much as possible about what she liked, what turned her on.

"Both. But then you'd suck on my nipples ... Take one in your mouth, between your teeth, and pull your head away. And I'd start grinding harder against you. Wanting to feel you."

"Maybe we'd just take off our pants first?" he contributed, still not really sure of what to say, how to describe doing something he'd never done before.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," she moaned into the phone. "And then I'd lick and suck your nipples while you were on top of me. We'd start humping against each other even faster. I'd take my hands and put them on your back, trying to get even closer to you. I'd wrap my legs around your back. You'd kiss me. We'd get lost in kissing each other. But with all that grinding, I'd be so wet ... So wet and ready for you."

"Ready for me to what?" he squeaked, trying to concentrate on her words while also trying to concentrate on keeping his closed hand enclosing his cock from accelerating too rapidly.

"Ready for you to fuck me."

Oh, my God. He almost came right then and there.

"How do you like to be -" No, he couldn't say the word. _Fucked_. It was so casually unemotional, so brutally impersonal. "How do you like to make love?"

"Unnnnn-hhhhh" was the only response he heard on the other end of the line until she murmured, "you said 'make love.'"

"Here's how I'd like it with you," she finally answered. "We'd both take our clothes off and then I'd take you in my hand and guide you inside of me. Just the tip. You'd rub yourself back and forth against me until I begged you to go deeper. You'd have to go slowly because you're so big, it might hurt otherwise."

"And when I'm - when I'm all the way inside of you?" he half-gasped, half-groaned.

"I'd put my legs on your shoulders so you could hit the perfect spot. Mmmmmm. And then you'd move in and out and in and out and in and out. Gently. Just getting me warmed up. Until I'd beg you to go faster. You'd feel my muscles starting to clench against you and the tightness makes it hard to move as freely but don't stop, Spencer, oh God, don't stop ..." She was moaning now, the frantic rustling of the covers audible even on his end of the phone.

"I'm really close," he managed to utter through parched lips. "I'm almost there."

"Yesssss ... come inside me, Spencer. Let your hot come spurt out of that big cock right into my tight, soaking wet cunt ..."

He felt his balls draw up and held his breath, eyes closed and imagining that it wasn't his own hand he was making love to, but Emily. Emily, who would feel even tighter than the steel grasp with which he squeezed himself and even wetter than the copious amounts of pre-come lubricating his dick. "I'm coming!" he cried out as the convulsions racked his body, the spurts of ejaculate escaping him in one seemingly-long stream ...

And then he heard her gasp and make a kind of wailing sound. "Unnnnhhhh ... I'm gonna come ... I'm gonna come so fucking hard ... Oh, God ... oh, shit ... yes, yes, yes, keep fucking me, Spencer, unnnnnhhhhhhh oh God yes ..." which prompted yet another round of convulsions on his part, dry this time, but no less pleasurable.

Afterward, they were both breathing heavily into the phone like sprinters who had just completed a marathon. And when he finally regained his ability to speak, he couldn't prevent himself from sarcastically remarking, "So is this the part where you hang up on me and pretend like none of this ever happened?"

"No, Spencer," she whispered sweetly. "This is the part where I pretend your arms are around me, holding me, while I tell you all the reasons I'm in love with you."

And, even though they were in separate apartments with only their individual pillows to hold onto, she did.


	7. Third Interlude

Despite the loving, caring words they'd uttered to one another on the phone two days earlier, when Monday arrived and Spencer began the short drive to the BAU headquarters, the only emotion he felt about seeing Emily Prentiss in person was dread.

In the ensuing days, it had become abundantly clear that his sexual and romantic inexperience wasn't the only thing - or even the most important thing - that had the potential to ruin their prospective relationship.

It was her.

It was how she'd uttered the phrase "fuck me" so naturally, when he didn't want to _fuck_ her, but to make love to her. It was how casually she justified all of her one-night stands as merely techniques to eradicate her loneliness. It was how, if they ever were truly together, she'd be breaking her two most important rules about men. And mostly, it was how damaged she remained, even after all these years, by the memory of the first and only person she'd truly loved.

Until she claimed to have fallen in love with him, of course. But being a couple involved so much more than mutual masturbation and phone sex, so much more than one conversation where she shyly disclosed all of the reasons she loved him and all of the events that had resulted in her inability to make herself stop loving him, despite her many ardent attempts to squelch those feelings. And, unlike him, she'd known from the very beginning that she could have had him at any time.

So while he wasn't at all certain that he'd know what to do if they ever became physically intimate, he was even less certain that _she'd_ know what to do if they ever became emotionally intimate. He did know, however, that he couldn't bear the thought of only partially having her. That would be so much worse, so much more painful, than not having her at all.

Did she realize that? Did she understand that? And, if not, would he be able to explain it to her?

Unfortunately, he'd spent so much time procrastinating by sitting in his car in the parking lot with the engine running, mulling over these thoughts, that he was the last to board the plane. And there was only one seat available, only one seat not taken by a teammate or a "go bag": the seat directly across from Emily. The same seat where, on the flight back from the compound, she'd taken the book he'd been reading from his hands and placed them in her own while he stroked his thumb against her smooth, velvety flesh.

What other option did he have but to grab a case file from Hotch and keep his eyes fixed on the beige folder as he lowered himself into the plush leather seat, muttering "hello" without daring to look at her?

"Hey, Reid," she responded in an equally noncommittal tone. "How was your weekend?"

Startled, his head jerked upward and when he saw the playful smile she was trying to suppress, he stuttered, "it was ... It was fine. Thanks for asking."

After the plane had ascended, they all gathered around Hotch and JJ, with Morgan leaning over the backseat behind their blonde correspondent liaison and Rossi relaxing comfortably across the aisle, leaving him standing next to her, their shoulders and legs brushing occasionally from the turbulence, as he struggled to hide the burning blush threatening to break through his poker face.

"So remind me again why we pushed so hard for this case when the NYPD has its own task force to deal with gang violence?" Morgan said, flipping through his file.

"Because this isn't an issue of gang violence," Hotch replied. "The first victims were found in apartments in the projects in East Harlem - all small-time drug-dealers and junkies - with their throats slashed ear to ear. None of these victims appeared on any gang-related watch list and not a single one had any tattoos matching those in the NYPD or FBI gang's database."

"It could still be retribution if these guys infringed on their turf," Morgan shrugged. "Or maybe it's some new initiation ritual the cops don't know about yet."

"That's what the NYPD thought at first," Rossi agreed. "Until the unsub moved out of his comfort zone. His next kill was an African-American jogger in Central Park. Stock trader, father of two young children, prominent in the community. And that's when the newspapers started speculating about racial bias, sparking a debate about whether the NYPD only cares about white victims. This attention seemed to motivate the unsub, because just this weekend he escalated dramatically and murdered an aide from the office of the 9th Congressional District's Representative. Same MO as the earlier kills: a black male with his throat slashed ear-to-ear."

"That's when we received a personal phone call from Mayor Bloomberg inviting us to come to New York," JJ added. "Details about the similarity of this murder to the others are not bring released at this time, so the news is freely speculating that it's related to pending gun legislation. That the aide was killed by some right-wing whacko trying to prove that 'guns don't kill people; people kill people.'" She rolled her eyes dramatically. "But still, it's exactly this kind of amateur speculation that just might lead us to the unsub. Since the focus of the media has shifted to an unrelated issue, we've instructed everyone involved to keep the details out of the newspapers. There's a very small task force working on this and I've been assured that we will not be placed in the position of chasing down potential leaks."

"You know, years ago, we had a similar case in the South. We assumed that the unsub was white and that his motives for killing were due to some racist ideology," mused Rossi.

"And?" Emily prompted, turning her head quizzically.

"And we couldn't have been more wrong. It turned out that the unsub had been shuttled from one abusive foster family to the next. Ages ago, especially in the South, it was customary to place black children with black foster families. The murders began with those families, eventually escalating to black men in the community who'd grown up comfortably and had become successful in their adulthood. When we finally caught him, we discovered that violence was his idea of retribution, his way of communicating the rage he felt about not being offered the same opportunities as a kid and his belief that, because of his upbringing, he'd been destined to fail in life."

"So you think it's the same MO?" Emily wanted to know.

"Well, look at where he started," offered Hotch. "The projects. One project in particular."

"Probably where he grew up," Emily realized. "Maybe even where he's still living."

"Exactly. And then once he gained confidence, he moved on to a jogger in Central Park - a man who had the luxury of jogging around the reservoir in the late evening wearing headphones connected to his iPhone," Rossi continued. "After the story hit the news and the unsub became a local celebrity of sorts, it caused him to escalate, to _really_ make a statement by going after a target who, in his mind, worked for the very government that had failed him."

"Wait a minute," Spencer realized excitedly. "Go back to the first murders. Were the dead junkies all women? Did all of them have children?"

Garcia, remotely connected to the team's laptop, quickly scanned the data and responded incredulously, "Yeah. How'd you know ..."

"Anna Freud once said, _It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost_," he recited from memory.

When the team stared at him blankly, not understanding the connection that was, to him, blatantly obvious, the words spilled out of his mouth in rapid-fire succession. "The unsub's mother must have been a drug addict! That's why he goes after female addicts with kids and low-level dealers. He believes that those children will be better off without their mothers; it's the manifestation of an unconscious wish to kill his own mother. We're looking for someone whose mother recently died. Someone who took care of her from childhood until death. The unsub can't deal with his conflicted feelings, with the realization that the person he took care of, is gone. He feels lost without her and all those years of suppressing his anger toward her have risen to the surface."

"Nice work, Reid." Hotch nodded appreciatively. "Garcia, start looking for recent death certificates and cross-reference them with lease agreements where the mother and son are both listed as tenants."

"Already on it, sir," she replied, her pink fingernails audibly clicking against her keyboard.

"But I still don't get why he didn't go after any of the black cops in the projects. I mean, if anyone should have protected him, it was them," Emily said, frowning.

"Since Bloomberg took office, he's pulled most of the field narcotics officers to focus on large-scale drug trade instead of busting small-time dealers and addicts," Morgan reminded her. "And the few remaining cops that do patrol the projects always work in teams. The unsub's intelligent enough to know that one knife against two guns equals death."

"But we've all got to keep in mind that most killers with this profile do eventually commit suicide by cop, once they feel like their message has been received by the public," Rossi added. "And that's why you're going to be in charge of communicating with the media, Derek. We're going to make you into a hero: a black FBI agent who came from difficult circumstances and worked your way up through the ranks in the police department's narcotics division before eventually being recruited for a job with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. You represent everything he resents, and when he sees headlines like 'Hero Ex-Cop Returns with FBI to Investigate Drug-Related Violence,' he's going to become fixated on you. He's going to do something risky, something unplanned and spontaneous, in order to get to you."

"Wait, so you're going to use Morgan as _bait?_" Garcia suddenly shrieked, her voice from the laptop resonating throughout the plane. "But ... you can't do that. I mean, what if ..."

"Relax, Garcia," Hotch interrupted. "First, you will flag any Internet searches for Derek Morgan. Many of these will originate from government and media personnel, and those can be excluded. But this unsub is going to want to know as much as possible about Agent Morgan and it'll be your job to trace any searches that come from the housing projects or Internet cafes. Secondly, he will have a protective detail at all times. And finally, because he will need to be trained in precisely how to communicate with the media, he will be sharing a room with JJ instead of Reid."

"Then where am I -" Spencer squeaked out, nervously tapping his fingers against his leg.

"You'll be staying with Agent Prentiss. I hope that's not a problem?" Hotch raised an eyebrow, scrutinizing his colleague for a reaction.

"No, sir," he managed to utter. "Not a problem."

"And you, Prentiss?"

"As long as he doesn't snore," she shrugged indifferently, prompting an outburst of laughter from the group.

As they returned to their seats, he heard Morgan call out, "Emily, he doesn't snore but watch out, because he _does_ steal all the covers."

"I do not!" he protested over his shoulder.

Emily scanned the plane to make sure no one was watching them before she whispered, "Well, that's too bad. Now I'm going to have to find some other excuse to cuddle with you."

His mouth went dry as, her brown eyes gleaming, she leaned across the table. "You know what my favorite thing about New York has always been?"

He shook his head uncertainly.

"The food," Emily murmured. "I hope you're looking forward to that, too."

_What? To the_ food?_ Where did that come from?_

The confusion must have shown on his face because she continued speaking in the same low tone as before. "The chance to taste things you've never tasted before. To spend time relishing the taste of something you thought you'd never have the chance to eat. Do you get what I'm saying?"

Oh, he got it all right. From the mouth that opened without any words to the tenting in his pants, he got it.

"Good," she practically purred. "Because I'm so hungry already I just can't wait."

And when she put it that way?

Neither could he.


	8. Taste

Her innuendos about tasting him had exploded like firecrackers in his brain, leaving residual traces sparking through his neurons even after the plane landed at JFK and the team drove in their armored SUVs to the midtown Manhattan hotel.

Once they'd all arrived and gathered in a small conference room on the first floor, he forced himself to focus on Hotch's announcement. "Tomorrow morning we're going to meet with the NYPD task force and then, Agent Morgan, you'll hold a press conference. For security reasons, we've had cameras installed in the hallways, the stairwells, and the lobby, with undercover agents monitoring the flow of traffic into and out of the hotel. Only authorized personnel will be able to access our floor via a special key card; if anyone attempts to enter the top floor without this card, an alarm will sound immediately so do not, under any circumstances, lose that card or get off the elevator in the presence of a civilian. There will be no cleaning service and no room service and you are under strict orders to remain in your rooms at all times unless headed to a briefing. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir," they responded in unison.

Now there was absolutely no way to avoid Emily. Depending on the length of the case, he would be confined to a room with her for an undefined period of time. What if they had a fight? What if he panicked and needed his own space? What if she took this opportunity to use him for sex just like she'd used all those other men in the past? How would he know if it was real or not?

After entering their room and slinging his go bag onto the floor, he turned to her and said, "You know, I really think we need to talk about this room-sharing thing, because -"

She cut him off, moving toward him as swiftly as a cat, and placed her mouth against his. "Enough talking," she murmured. "Time for tasting."

"But ... But Emily I -"

His sentence was interrupted by another kiss. The kind of kiss that sent his mind spinning. Her warm lips opened against his and her tongue snaked out to meet his own and he was officially in heaven. This was nothing like his experience with Lila, who'd kissed him as though she'd expected cameras to start rolling at any moment. This was a real kiss.

This was his first real kiss.

She placed her hands on his back and pulled him closer, her exquisite, talented tongue drawing circles around his own. He wasn't quite sure what to do, so he just followed her lead. And then her lips were sucking on his tongue, gently at first but gradually, as he felt his cock rising and pressing against his grey pants, with more intensity.

He couldn't stifle the moan that originated somewhere deep inside his body and vibrated through his chest.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, he was kissing her greedily, his hands tangled in her black hair while he slowly explored her mouth with his tongue, darting it in and out, softly twisting it against hers, before eventually grazing his teeth over her lower lip and sucking on it lightly.

It was her turn to moan now. "You're such a tease," she hissed, grinding her hips against him.

Despite himself, he felt overjoyed at this accomplishment: his confidence soaring with the knowledge that, with only his mouth and his tongue, he was capable of inspiring the same kind of wanton lust that she evoked in him.

Lost in those kisses, making out like two teenagers in the back of a movie theater, they'd somehow managed to move toward the bed, sitting next to one another without their lips parting for even a moment. Emily's hands cupped his face while their tongues continued their erotic dance and, not really knowing what to do with his own hands, he instinctively began to trace his fingertips slowly up and down her arms until he felt goosebumps rising there.

Without warning, she parted the kiss, grasped the bottom of her red short-sleeved shirt and pulled it over her head, discarding it somewhere on the other side of the bed. He was so transfixed by the sight of her full, perfect breasts underneath her black bra that he almost didn't notice when she began hastily ripping his plaid shirt off, buttons flying in all directions. "W-wait!" he protested, but it was too late. She'd already reached behind him to take it off completely, before realizing that the buttons near the wrist were impeding her ability to remove it. He looked down at his bare chest, at his ruined shirt, and then back up at Emily, whose hands were busy unhooking her bra, and - ignoring the inner nagging voice of reason chiding him to stop this right now and talk to her before it went any further - he unbuttoned his sleeves and shrugged off the shirt.

They stared at each other for a moment, almost like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden realizing their nakedness for the first time. He was struck by how her breasts were so exquisite, so impossibly beautiful. "I -" he gulped, "I don't know what to do."

"Let me show you," she offered, leaning forward to lick circles around his nipples. When she took one in her mouth and sucked on it, he was in a state of total bliss. He'd never realized how sensitive his nipples were, never once thought about touching them in all the years he'd spent touching himself, and now he couldn't help himself from wondering why. His thoughts were interrupted when she glanced up at him for just a second with those dark, long-lashed eyes as she moved to his other nipple, lightly taking it between her teeth and moving her head backward as it hardened in her mouth.

"Oh ... ohhhh!" he gasped, surprised by how a small sting of pain could feel so utterly pleasurable, could resonate throughout his body with such force.

And then she laid down on the bed and whispered, "I want you to taste me like that."

With insecurity still running rampant in his mind and with the resolution that he was going to make this different for her - not some quick, orgasmic fuck but the kind of prolonged pleasure she hadn't experienced in a long time, the kind of prolonged pleasure she so deserved - he started by kissing her neck, light sweeps of his lips across her jaw line, her nape, her collarbones. He kissed his way down each arm and then returned to use his tongue where his lips had just been, taking each finger in his mouth and slowly sucking on it. He kissed and licked the area directly above her breasts and the area directly below them, watching in awe as her nipples grew pencil-hard even without any direct stimulation there.

Emily was shaking below him, despite the ambient room temperature, her legs splayed and pelvis rising and falling slowly as she moaned and cried out with each new place his lips and tongue roamed.

It was time.

At first, he licked wide circles around each of her breasts, his tongue languishing briefly before the circles became tighter, shorter, until he was licking the area directly around her nipples. Experimenting, he flicked his tongue against one several times, eliciting an animalistic wail from below. So he kept doing it, switching from one nipple to the other, until he decided to take one in his mouth and suck on it like she'd done with him.

Her ragged, needy moans were unmistakable: she was definitely experiencing pleasure. She trusted him enough to let him help her to feel pleasure again.

And he loved her so much for that.

"I need -" she rasped, struggling to keep her eyes open, "I need ... more."

He froze. More. He didn't know how to do "more" ... He barely even knew how to do what he was already doing. And as badly as he wanted to bury his stiff cock inside of her, he still wasn't ready to have sex.

Emily must have sensed his hesitation, because as she wriggled out of her black pants, she practically begged him, "I'll talk you through it. I just want your mouth on me; I want it so bad ... It's been so long since anyone has made me feel like this, since I've let anyone do this to me ... Please, Spencer, please. I'll talk you through it, I swear, and even if you can't ... get me there ... I can still get myself there ... I just want you to taste me ... Please, just for a little while, just for a little while, I promise."

He'd read so many books on how to perform oral sex on women, and the one sentence that jumped out at him every time was: _all women are different and not every woman will respond to the same techniques._ But, then again, hadn't he been reading her body like a book up until this moment? And didn't he, too, long to place his mouth and his tongue there like he'd done with her panties only days earlier? Initially, he just kissed her mouth, shifting his weight so he was on top of her. So she could feel how hard he was through his clothes. And then he kissed his way down her body, to her stomach, where he brushed his lips back and forth against the skin directly above her panties, occasionally permitting his tongue to dart out and taste her warm skin. He kissed and licked her inner thighs, always stopping before reaching the cloth covering her, before reaching the area where she wanted him most. He could see how wet she was ... he could smell it ... and now she was spreading her legs wide and pleading with him to taste it.

It only took one long lick over the silky material until, frustrated, Emily leaned down and, in one smooth move, tossed aside her underwear and sighed, "That's better."

Remembering the books he'd read, he started by slowly and gently tracing his tongue upward along her slit, relishing the taste as he swallowed her tangy warm wetness. He repeated this several times, each time applying slightly more pressure, until he felt Emily shaking beneath him and heard her moaning, "Right there ... that's it." OK, so he'd found her clitoris. Now what was he supposed to _do _with it?

Concentrating on that one area, he lapped at her like a kitten drinking milk, constantly gauging her responsiveness. Through trial and error, he found that she seemed to really like it when he flicked his tongue against it repeatedly, quickly, and with increasing pressure. "Oh, god, yes ... Just like that ... You're so fucking good at this ... Don't stop, please don't stop ..." she cried out, her thighs suddenly clamping against his head. She was close. She had to be close, right? So he kept doing what he'd been doing, his tongue starting to ache from flicking against her clit at such a rapid speed and for such a long time.

And then her whole body was shaking and he had to move his own hands to hold her legs in place while her clit crashed against his teeth and she nearly screamed, "I'm gonna come ... Spencer, oh God, don't stop, keep fucking me with your tongue, I'm gonna come, ohhhhhh, God ... I'm gonna come, I'm gonna come so fucking hard ..." followed by a series of incomprehensible noises as she convulsed underneath him, small squirts of hot wetness hitting his chin. He didn't know how to tell when she was finished, so he kept going until she pushed his head away, gasping, "Too much ... too much."

He crawled up next to her, his tongue sore from the linguistic maneuvers he'd just been engaged in, and kissed her sweetly. Tenderly. "That was so beautiful," he whispered. "You are so beautiful."

There were tears running down her face, which he kissed away, still murmuring gentle phrases about how beautiful she was and how much he loved her and how grateful he was that she trusted him enough to let him bring her to orgasm, knowing intuitively that the source of her tears wasn't regret or shame, but the overwhelming emotion of permitting herself to experience something she'd purposefully denied herself so many times in the past.

After she stopped crying, he paused and asked uncertainly, "So was it - was I ... OK?"

She sat up, her black hair spilling over her shoulders and responded incredulously, "Wait a minute. Were we in the same room? Because you were definitely more than OK. If I didn't know you better, I'd think you'd done this a hundred times."

"And now," she added, "I want to taste you."

Despite the throbbing discomfort of his erection, he shook his head. "I don't want this to be some kind of trade-off, Emily. I don't want you to feel like you owe me any favors because of what I ... because of what just happened."

She shook her head in disbelief. "No matter how smart those IQ tests say you are, you can still be such an idiot sometimes, you know?"

Um ... No, actually, he didn't know.

"It's because I _want _to," she continued, reaching down to unbutton and unzip his pants, smiling to herself as he groaned when the fabric slid against his hard-on.

"But I -" He was in full-blown panic mode now. "But I'm not going to be able to last very long and maybe it's better if we wait ..."

"If you want me to stop, then tell me to stop," she shrugged, leaning over to lick him through his briefs. "At any point, just tell me to stop if you're too scared or if you don't trust me enough and I promise I'll stop."

_If you don't trust me enough._ God, she really did know how to manipulate him, didn't she?

So he let her take off his briefs, eyes closed until he heard a sudden intake of breath that immediately prompted a "What? Emily, what is it?"

"You're so big and thick. I mean, I knew that from seeing you before, but up close ... Wow."

Despite himself, a small tinge of pride surged through him at her comment. It only lasted a second, though, because suddenly her warm tongue was moving from the base of his cock to the tip, pressing against the pulsating vein underneath.

He was oozing pre-come, which she licked away, placing the angry red tip in her mouth and sucking hard. He cried out in ecstasy, practically on the verge of coming already. She must have been able to tell because, to his amazement, she swallowed nearly his entire length, her tongue still pushed up against that sensitive vein while she relaxed her throat so she could suck him deep and hard and fast.

Nothing had ever felt so physically amazing. No dictionary he'd memorized contained a word that could even begin to describe it accurately. Their eyes met and she smiled reassuringly. A smile that pushed him over the edge.

"Emily, I'm -"

But it was like she already knew, her head bobbing at an increasingly rapid pace, the tip of her tongue licking him even harder underneath, her throat tensing against him tightly while she held him at his base with one hand. And then he felt his balls draw up and groaned in ecstasy as the first long spurt left his body, followed by another and another and another and she just kept sucking and swallowing, sucking and swallowing, and he thought he'd never stop coming - oh, Jesus, he never _wanted _to stop coming - until he felt those final meager throbs and began to soften in her mouth.

"Spent" was really the only word for it. He was spent. Like someone who'd just emptied their checking account and had absolutely nothing left. The room was still spinning when he felt Emily nudge his arm so she could lay on his chest, his galloping heartbeat probably resonating right through her, as he put one arm around her and, from afar, he could feel her soft kisses against his neck.

When he finally crashed back down into the real world, he gasped, "I'm sorry ... I'm sorry it was over so fast ..."

"It's OK," she murmured, placing a gentle kiss on his mouth. "It's OK, baby."

Baby. Oh my God, she'd really called him 'baby,' he thought, elated. That was better - well, that was _almost _better - than the orgasm she'd just given him.

"I'm not -" she stuttered hesitantly. "I'm not really sure what to do now."

"What if we just lay together like this for a while?" he asked, shifting slightly to nudge her body so that it was curled against his and placing his arm around her shoulders.

"That sounds nice," she replied softly, almost wistfully. "You holding me. That sounds ... really nice."

And it was.


	9. Fourth Interlude

He awoke with a raging hard-on, throbbing between Emily's thighs, which were still damp and slightly sticky from the previous night. _What if I just moved against her a little?_ he thought, glancing over at the alarm clock. Ten minutes before it went off. More time than he'd need.

Carefully, slowly, so as not to rouse her from sleep, he slid his cock back and forth against her. He pushed upward so he could be as close to her as possible without actually entering her - and inadvertently, without realizing it, began to stimulate her clitoris with his tip.

It was when Emily spread her legs and began to thrust her hips against him that he knew she'd awakened. Silently, his arms still around her, her body and face turned away from him, they moved together. He was close - oh, god, he was so close - but he wanted her to come first. Mercilessly, he pummeled himself against her clit, clenching his hands and forcing his mind to enter those dark, dark places that only a BAU member knows so well, until he felt that first twitch, followed by her body stiffening in his arms along with her cries of pleasure as she clamped her legs against him, wet warmth flooding out of her and onto him. It was that final gush of fluid that sent him over the edge, his balls drawing up tightly and semen spilling out of him and he bit his hand to stop himself from screaming at the sheer ecstasy of being so nearly inside of her, at being able to give her pleasure so easily and effortlessly, at the memories of the previous night flashing like snapshots in his brain.

"Mmmmm," she murmured when he was finished, turning toward him to kiss his neck. "What a nice way to wake up."

"I woke up pretty much ... on the verge already," he admitted. Quickly, so she wouldn't think he'd been anything but thrilled about her awakening, he added, "I love that you woke up ready for me, too."

At that moment, the alarm next to the bed began beeping incessantly. He reached over with one hand to turn it off and said wistfully, "If only we had more time."

"Maybe we do," Emily suggested coyly.

"No, remember ... We have to get to the briefing and the press conference this morning in about an hour."

"Not if we went out for Chinese takeout and both got food poisoning," Emily said with an innocent smile.

"But -" he squeaked, conflicted. Sure, he wanted to spend all day alone in a hotel room with Emily but lie to avoid going to work? Especially when that meant their team would be down two agents in a high-profile, high-pressured case?

"I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything except how much I want to feel you inside of me," Emily murmured suggestively, running one hand down his chest. "There's not enough underwear in my go bag to keep changing it all day."

Inside of her.

She wanted to feel him inside of her.

He groaned, his cock rising against her when she started lightly, almost absent-mindedly stroking him. "Let me call Hotch," she insisted, mesmerizing him with her long eyelashes and dark brown eyes, her full, pouty lips articulating each word just as slowly as the movements of her hand.

He nodded in response.

"But only this once, Emily," he pleaded weakly. "We can't lose our jobs over this."

Immediately, her cell phone was in her hand as she spoke to Hotch in a weak, sick voice. Halfway through the conversation, she ran into the bathroom, where he heard the violent sound of her vomiting.

Concerned, he rushed into the bathroom and, to his shock, saw Emily with her fingers down her throat, forcing herself to gag and throw up the meager snack they'd eaten the previous evening on the plane before arriving in New York, before finishing her conversation in a low tone. "Thank you, sir. No, that isn't necessary, sir. I'm positive it's just food poisoning. I have to go. I think I'm going to throw up again -" and with that, she pressed one finger against her phone, ending the call.

He was frozen in disbelief, stunned by how easily and effortlessly she'd taken her lie to the next level to make it believable. What if she'd done the same thing with him? What if all of this was a lie? How could he ever fully trust someone who not only lied with abandon, but actually created elaborate, convincing scenarios to back up those lies?

"I'm not bulimic," she said immediately, mistaking the horrified expression on his face. "I mean, I definitely had a period in college where I was so obsessed with perfection in all areas of my life that I did develop some ... eating issues. But that's all over now. Has been for a long, long time."

"You think I'm upset because I thought you were bulimic?" he spat out in dismay. "I _wish _it was bulimia! I'm upset because you lie so smoothly, so easily, because you take those lies to a level I'd never even dream of ..."

"I did it for you! I did it for us!" she insisted loudly, confusion clouding her dark eyes.

"And what else did you do for me, Emily? What else did you do for 'us'? Did you fake your orgasms last night and this morning? Did you pretend those one-night stands meant less to you than they really did? Did you send me panties you'd used with someone else?" Spencer's head was spinning with all of the possibilities. "Did you lie about being in love with me?"

"No, no, no, and absolutely fucking not," she answered instantly, vehemently. "I would never ... Not with you ..."

"So you'd lie to Hotch and you'd fake orgasms with all of your one-night flings and you'd never tell anyone on the team about the one time you did fall in love back in college, but you expect me to believe that I am the single, solitary person you're capable of being honest with?" he asked harshly, bitterly. "Maybe I don't have issues with trust after all. Maybe I have issues with trusting _you_. And maybe there's a very good reason for that. A reason that any amateur profiler could spot in half a second."

Before she could defend herself, he turned on the shower and got in, the hot water washing away all physical traces of her body. If only there was such a simple way to wash away the stubbornly lingering mental traces, he'd do it in an instant.

After his quick shower, he began rooting through his go bag for his clothing, rapidly dressing himself. It was only when he reached for his shoes and began to tie them that he heard Emily's hurt voice behind him wanting to know where he was going.

"To work," he snapped. "I'm suddenly over my bout of food poisoning."

He took one last look at her insecure, abandoned face before walking out the door, spitting out words he regretted instantly, words that would later haunt him in ways he couldn't possibly have imagined, "and you know what else? I'm suddenly over you, too."

He broke protocol by taking a cab to the briefing, where he flashed his FBI badge to squeeze past all of the reporters gathered in front of 1 Police Plaza. Morgan was speaking with confidence, playing up his role as a former cop and a current member of the FBI. The questions had already begun when Spencer joined the rest of the team standing behind the podium, united with the special NYPD task force.

"I thought you had food poisoning," Hotch said skeptically, his face expressionless as he faced the cameras.

"False alarm," he responded.

About an hour after the briefing and after a shadow team of NYPD officers had driven FBI-plated SUVs into the hotel parking lot, the team gathered in a small, windowless room in the back of 1PP, where the technical analysts had just managed to finish setting up a secure connection between New York and DC.

Garcia's worried, anxious face appeared on screen as she blurted out, "I know who he is! I know who the unsub is!"

"Give us everything," Hotch ordered.

"His name's Henry Fellowes. Born to a heroin-addicted mother and placed in numerous foster homes before the age of twelve. He kept running away, always returning back to her, so DSS eventually gave up and closed the file. He was busted a few times for heroin possession before he turned eighteen, but those records have been expunged."

"He's a junkie?" Morgan asked, surprised. "That wasn't in the profile."

"No, no," Garcia shook her hand dismissively. "He wasn't buying it for himself. He was buying it for his mother when she was too sick to score on her own. After he turned eighteen, he tried to enter the police force but failed the psychological exam. Twice. Reasons given were not only his history of engaging in illegal activities but his refusal to accept any wrongdoing on his part or the part of his mother. After that, he was arrested several times for impersonating a police officer. Items taken included an authenticated shield, uniform, and badge under the name 'Jack McCoy.' This last time, because he'd violated his probation, he spent a night in Rikers before returning home - to find his mother dead of a heroin overdose. In the same project housing where he'd lived his whole life. The same one where, less than a week later, the murders began."

"So we've got him," said Hotch, grabbing his coat. "All we need to do is put a lookout on his apartment."

"Not so fast," Garcia interrupted. "After the press conference this morning, I put an alert out on both his real name and his pseudonym and a local supplier to the NYPD popped up on the radar. He admitted selling authentic police gear to a guy named 'Jack McCoy' who'd claimed to have lost his credentials. Only this time? The guy sold him an authentic NYPD gun, too."

"This is his endgame," mused Spencer. "He didn't want to use a traceable weapon before. Now he doesn't care, because he knows he's going to be caught. He knows he'll finally get the chance to tell his story to the world."

"Um, guys?" Garcia said quickly. "There's been a breach of security at the hotel. The facial recognition software shows it's him. And he's headed straight for Derek's room. He's probably planning on waiting there until you arrive."

"His real room or his registered room?" Hotch asked.

"Wait, they're different rooms?" she asked, surprised.

"We had Morgan staying with JJ last night to rehearse his press conference briefing, remember? And Prentiss got food poisoning so she's still inside the room registered to Reid and Morgan," Hotch explained hurriedly.

"Oh, my God." Garcia's hands flew to her face. "Oh, my God. That means he's in there. He's in there with Emily."

Just then, over the police scanner, he heard the words he never, ever thought he'd hear, not in his worst nightmares: "Shots fired. Possible FBI agent down. All units report to ..."

This couldn't be happening. She had to be OK. She just had to be. Thinking back to his harsh rebuff just as he'd left the hotel, his cruel statement about suddenly being over her, made him feel as nauseated as bad Chinese food.

Because if she didn't make it and those were his very last words to her ... would she know they were a lie? The first lie he'd ever told her?

And, most of all, would he ever have the chance to make it up to her?


	10. Touch

Through it all, he stayed right by her side.

The ambulance ride where, driving at full speed with sirens blaring, the paramedics infused her with plasma to replace the blood she'd lost and placed her on a morphine drip to reduce the pain, as they told him, "Don't worry, the bullet missed her heart. She'll be in and out of surgery in no time." The seemingly-endless ambulance ride where he gripped her hand and whispered in her ear, "I didn't mean it. I love you. I'm here for you. Please be OK. You have to be OK. You have to be." The ambulance ride where he kept torturing himself by going over and over and over those last, cruel words he'd said to her on his way out of the hotel room.

After surgery, donning an itchy blue protective outfit and surgical mask to prevent Emily from developing a post-operative infection, he sat vigil for hours upon hours, shaking off the suggestions from his colleagues about getting some rest. He didn't want to rest. He wanted to be the first sight that Emily saw when the anesthesia and painkillers wore off and she finally opened her eyes.

Every second seemed to last an eternity. All he could do was grip her limp hand in his and talk to her about how much he loved her, about all the reasons he loved her, about how sorry he was that he'd left her there, vulnerable, in that hotel room, with such bitter, vicious parting words. About how those words were a lie. All he could do was stroke her arm with his long fingers and watch the nurses come in to periodically change the bandages on her left shoulder, writing down her vital signs in their tan clinical charts and ignoring his pleas for information, dispassionately instructing him to speak to the doctor if he had any questions.

After so many hours awake, Spencer found himself beginning to nod off, despite the coffee he'd been chugging like water and the orange tablet of Adderall given to him by JJ, who warned, "if anyone asks, you did _not_ get this from me." He began to drift into dreamland, a pleasant dream where he and Emily were getting married that quickly turned nightmarish: someone from the crowd had fired at Emily and she just kept looking at him with this strange expression as the blood seeped out everywhere, asking in a slurred voice, "Spencer? Spencer?"

His eyes flew open. It wasn't a dream. Not the last part, anyway. Emily was awake and saying his name. "Emily!" he cried out, leaning over the metal railing to embrace her, before he felt her wince.

"Sorry, it just hurts when you hold me too tight. You'd think I'd been shot or something," she dead-panned, smirking slightly.

"I just want you to know ... what I said ... I didn't mean it, not a word of it ... and ..."

Emily held up her hand, silencing him. "You were upset. I get it. I hurt you. And you know what I thought when that bullet ripped through me?"

"What?" he asked, cringing at the visual.

"I thought: if I live through this, I'm never going to tell another lie again. So here we go. I'm in love with you, Spencer. In the beginning, I used your sexual inexperience against you, thinking it would make you fall in love with me. I didn't believe you when you said you were already in love with me. I didn't understand how it could be possible, since you've seen me at my very worst and since we'd never even kissed before. I thought that maybe it was a fleeting crush. A crush I wanted to turn into love by doing the only thing I knew how to do - by using sex. But in the hotel room? That wasn't manipulation at all. That was love. A real, true expression of love."

They both turned their heads when they heard a cough, the doctor making his presence known. "Ms. Prentiss?"

"Agent Prentiss," she corrected him, with a flash of her white teeth to remind him that she wasn't just another gunshot victim with excellent health insurance but an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"I apologize. Agent Prentiss, you're almost ready to be released, provided you have someone to take care of you. You will need to change the bandages at least twice a day to avoid developing sepsis, and I'm going to write you a prescription for Dilaudid that you can take if the pain becomes agonizing."

"Not Dilaudid," she interjected. "Can you prescribe anything weaker?"

Spencer knew it was for his benefit that she'd turned down the prescription and he shook his head in disagreement. "It's OK. I don't want your medication. I just want you to be comfortable."

"And who will be taking care of you, Ms. - I mean, Agent Prentiss?" the doctor inquired.

"I will," Spencer said, standing up to look the doctor in the eye.

"And you are ... ?"

"Agent Spencer Reid. Or Doctor Reid, if you prefer. I'm her ... I'm her boyfriend."

Several days later, at the luxury hotel, after all of the BAU members had come and gone, like a small parade entering their room at all hours of the day and night, they were eventually called back to Washington, D.C. to work on another case. Hotch agreed with the doctor that someone should stay with Emily for a few days until she was cleared for travel and, given Spencer's remedial medical training, this rendered him the best choice. He nodded seriously at the news, suppressing the grin that threatened to dominate his face and reveal his elation.

It was their first chance to be truly alone with each other since the morning of the shooting.

Spencer sat on a chair beside her, tending to Emily's bandages, while she teasingly remarked, "so you want to be my boyfriend, huh?"

"If you want me to," he said, forcing his voice to remain steady and casual, not wanting to betray the soaring hope in his heart.

"Remind me to update my Facebook status," she purred, reaching out to stroke his cheek from the bed. "So, doctor, what's our prognosis?"

"Statistically speaking, it looks like we're going to be OK," he answered with a smile. "Confounding variables include mistrust and dishonesty, but if you remove those from the equation, the results appear overwhelmingly positive."

"Come over here and hold me, you nerd," she laughed, tossing her black hair.

Carefully, so as not to place pressure on her injury, he crawled over her and, when she raised her torso and snuggled into his chest, he wrapped one arm around her, asking in a concerned voice, "Does that hurt at all?"

"Nope."

"Because your last dose of Dilaudid will be wearing off soon, and I just don't ..."

"Spencer ... Spencer. Stop it. Seriously. I'm fine." She gazed up at him with doe eyes. "Besides, haven't I always been very good about telling you exactly what I want?"

His throat went dry. "So ... What - what do you want?" he coughed out.

"I told you already. On the day I was shot. Remember?" She began to trace light circles over his cotton pajamas with her finger.

_I want to feel you inside of me._

Yes, he remembered, all right.

"B-but you could get hurt! I mean, it's only been a few days. What if you're not ready ..."

She cut him off, gently kissing his cheek. "Listen, if you're not ready, I understand. If you're afraid of getting hurt, I understand. And I'll wait for you. I'll wait for you as long as you need me to."

He swallowed hard. "Remember when ... the night before the shooting ... when you ... you put your mouth on me and it ... it was over so quickly and ..."

"Look, Spencer," she sighed impatiently, "we've been in this hotel room now for ... what? Four days?"

He nodded.

"OK, so that's four days of never knowing when Garcia might show up in the middle of the night with a surprise bouquet of flowers or when Hotch might abruptly enter the room at some ungodly hour in the morning, handing me his cell phone because Jack wants to tell me hello before going to school or when Morgan might walk in with a stack of DVDs he picked up after lunch ... That's four days of you sleeping on the couch. Four days of you taking two-minute showers because of your insane worry that something might happen to me while I was out of your sight. Four days of you helping me into the bathtub and then averting your eyes until you'd pulled the curtain so you couldn't see me, waiting until I'd finished towel-drying myself and putting on fresh pajamas before you permitted yourself to look at me."

He didn't like her characterization of his behavior. He didn't like it one bit. "And if I hadn't taken those measures?" he retorted defensively. "And if we hadn't been able to control ourselves? And if someone had walked in? And if ..."

"Shhhhh," Emily whispered, stroking his hand. "All I'm saying is that it's been four days of unbearable sexual tension, four days of going insane with lust, and four days of absolutely no release. The one time I did try to masturbate was the time JJ knocked on the door and told me that Henry wanted me to sing him a lullaby because he couldn't fall asleep."

"The one time I tried was the time Rossi spent the entire day cooking and showed up with two porters to help him carry all that homemade Italian food into the fridge," Spencer admitted with a reluctant smile.

"So I thought ... maybe ... we could just start off with touching each other. And then we could see where it goes from there," Emily murmured against his neck, her lips vibrating there alluringly. "Because, let's face it, neither of us are going to last very long right now. And I don't want our first time to be some kind of quickie sexual release thing. I want it to be about love, not about need. So maybe if we exhaust the hell out ourselves first, we'll be able to make love."

Ever since Emily had initiated this conversation, he'd felt himself growing harder against his pajama bottoms, his perpetual semi-erection now throbbing painfully, copiously lubricated with pre-come.

"I think someone wants to come out and play," Emily observed, her voice a throaty whisper, as she began to grind her pelvis against his. "What do you think?"

He had lost the ability to speak, capable only of nodding vigorously.

"It's kind of hot in here, wouldn't you say? I think we should get out of these pajamas." Before he could respond, she was already pulling off her T-shirt, revealing her exquisite breasts - and the bandage on her shoulder that caused him to avert his eyes with guilt - while she wiggled out of her panties and pajama bottoms. When he finally looked up again, he could see the damp, matted pubic hair sticking to her pussy.

She was careful when undressing him, unbuttoning his long-sleeved shirt and helping him shake it off, making sure to pull on the elastic of his pajama bottoms and briefs so they wouldn't inadvertently brush against his cock, so engorged by now it was pointed directly toward his face, streams of pre-come raining down from the tip like teardrops.

"You're so hard," she murmured into his ear. "So hard."

Again, like a deaf-mute, he could only manage to nod in response.

Emily ran her hand slowly up and down his length and her feather-light touch felt like heaven. She massaged his balls, squeezing them gently, and eliciting a deep groan. "I won't tease you anymore. Even though I want to," she promised, leaning forward to kiss him.

Paralyzed with desire, overwhelmed by his fast-approaching orgasm, he was unable to meet her hot tongue in his mouth, the noises from deep within him spilling out as she began to suck on his tongue, rapidly moving her hand up and down against his shaft, jerking him off with abandon. When he felt his balls draw up, she took her mouth away and stared at his cock, tightening her grip and squeezing it several times while urging him, "Oh, yes, baby. Come for me, baby."

And come he did. He raised his hips in the air and somehow, every tight squeeze of her hand matched another exquisite throb of release - and another and another and yet another - as he felt each splash of come hit his torso, his face, even his hair, until there was only a trickle left, one last final throb before her hand slowed down, milking out every last drop of orgasmic release.

"Oh my god," she sighed, snuggling against his chest and kissing his jawline, "that was so fucking hot."

Breathing labored, he glanced over at her and insisted, "Now ... Your turn."

She didn't engage in her typical delaying tactics, didn't implore him to kiss her or suck on her breasts, didn't even offer to guide him through the process of masturbating her. She just laid down on her back, spread her legs, and moaned, "Touch me."

He wasn't sure quite how to do it and he definitely didn't want to have to ask, and then suddenly he remembered with complete clarity how she'd touched herself in front of him and, confidence boosted, reached between her legs and began to draw slow, tight circles around the hood of her clit.

"Right there ... Oh god yes, right there ... but faster, Spencer ... Do it faster ..." she begged, her eyes half-closed.

His long finger was moving against her at rocket-speed when he remembered something she'd said that night - about how she had to fantasize when touching herself - and wondered if the same was true when someone else was touching her. Either way, the thought of talking dirty to her while masturbating her like this excited the hell out of him.

"Do you like me fucking your clit with my finger?" he growled.

Her dark eyes flew open. Eyes filled with need, with desire. "Oh god yes."

"Then say it."

"I like ... unnnnhhh ... you ... you fucking my clit ... mmmmnnnnhhhh ... with your finger," she moaned, her breathing becoming increasingly labored.

"You're so sexy, Emily. You make me want to get on top of you and put my cock inside of you. Can you feel how hard it is for you?" He pressed against her thigh with the erection that had quickly recovered from his powerful orgasm only minutes earlier.

"I want that, too," she half-sobbed, her hands grasping the comforter and her pelvis rising in the air, a sure sign that she was close.

"I want to be inside of you, thrusting against you ... I want to come inside of you ... I want to fill you up with my hot come ..."

That was all it took. He could feel her convulsing beneath him before she cried out, "I'm coming!" as her body shook like an epileptic and pieces of languages he didn't understand escaped her throat. It was her who had to push his hand away, gasping, "too much ..." while she closed her eyes, as though trying to hold onto the feeling of bliss for as long as possible, and turned toward him to snuggle into his chest.

Ignoring his rock-hard penis, he put his arm around her again and kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her earlobes, and her mouth, murmuring soothingly, "I love you. I love you so very much."

"You knew exactly how to touch me and you knew just what to say to bring me over the edge," she marveled. "And you knew ... You knew that afterward I'd feel emotional about it. That I'd need you to hold me and tell me you love me. Don't you see, Spencer? Don't you see how lucky I am to have you as a boyfriend?"

She took a moment to brush several brown strands of hair out of his eyes and admitted softly, "You're the only one I could ever imagine myself being so vulnerable with." He inhaled sharply, a harsh, ragged sound, trying to blink back the tears stinging his eyes. "That's why I love you, Spencer Reid."

Noticing the tears in his eyes, she started kissing him, pulling away to murmur against his lips, "Don't cry, baby. Don't cry. Just kiss me. Just keep kissing me."

They kissed hungrily, greedily: the kisses of a couple who have been wounded repeatedly and yet still managed to survive. Emily pulled back and said, "Let's try something. I'm going to breathe into your lungs and you return that breath into mine for as long as you can. OK?"

Diffusion hypoxia. He was familiar with the concept, although not the practice. "OK," he agreed hesitantly.

"Get on top of me first."

So he sat up and lowered himself down onto her, opening his mouth against hers as she breathed into his lungs and he breathed back into hers. Other than feeling light-headed, he felt inexplicably connected to her, and a surge of eroticism overtook him. Their mouths still locked together, they began grinding against one another simultaneously.

He could feel the underside of his cock hitting her clitoris, and when she wrapped her legs around him, he was suddenly inside of her.

It felt incredible, the sensation of being surrounded by her wet warmth, and yet he still struggled to disentangle his lips from hers, asking her for guidance with a mere "Emily?"

"I'm ready if you are," she responded, her eyes betraying her desire.

They moved together slowly, rhythmically, as easily and effortlessly as ballroom dancing. Emily offered the occasional suggestion ("try to aim upward when you thrust in and out") or instruction ("I want you to suck on my nipples as hard as you can") but, much to his surprise and delight, he wasn't bad at sex. He wasn't bad at it at all.

When he felt Emily's inner walls tighten around him, though, he knew he'd have to muster up all the resolve within him to wait for her to come first. He was moving against her rapidly now, her pelvis rising to meet him, and when she bit her lip and let out a low grunt, he knew she was close. And then, just when he didn't think he could hold out any longer, he felt it. A molten-hot gush of wetness pouring out from inside of her as her inner muscles squeezed him so tightly he could barely move. That feeling, that expression on her face, was enough to propel him over the edge, his cock pulsating as he shot streams of come into her, over and over again, until he collapsed on top of her, breathing heavily.

She cried out suddenly - a cry of pain - and immediately he rolled off of her, apologizing for putting his weight on her injured shoulder, struggling to sit up so he could bring her a tablet of Dilaudid, despite the dizzy post-orgasmic head rush that made his ears ring and the world turn black when he tried to stand.

"No, wait," Emily protested. "I'm fine. I don't want any medication. I just want to be close to you. Spencer, please."

It was the vulnerability in her voice that stopped him. So he laid back down on the bed and put his arms around her, kissing her and telling her that it was better than any of the fantasies he'd ever had about losing his virginity, soothingly stroking her bare back with his hand.

After a brief period of silence, Emily finally spoke. "Everything was ... so perfect. When I came, it wasn't even about orgasms or sex. It was like pure love just flowing out of me. Does that make sense?"

It did. Unlike their previous, frenzied encounters, this one didn't have the same desperate rush, the same uncontrollable need. It was intimate and it was beautiful and it was even spiritual, in a way, if Spencer could find it within himself to believe in such a thing.

There was only one problem left. One issue they'd failed to discuss in all their time together.

"Now how do we tell the rest of the team?"


	11. Conclusion

"You really thought we didn't know already?" Morgan laughed, shaking his head. "Come on, Reid. Your tells are easier to read than a bad poker player."

"And yet I'm still banned from every casino on the West Coast," Reid responded defensively, tucking his hazel-brown hair behind his ears. "So how is it that -"

"Tells in love are different," Garcia interrupted, her hot pink lips pursed in a smirk. "I've known about your little crush on Emily ever since she walked through those doors, like some perfectly-proportioned raven-haired goddess from another world."

"Me, too," echoed JJ.

"Me, too," added Rossi.

Spencer turned to Hotch, his eyes questioning. Hotch, the only one who had maintained a stoic silence throughout the initial confession regarding their relationship and the ensuing discussion that followed.

"I knew about your attraction to Agent Prentiss," Hotch said quietly, looking down. "As long as your emotions didn't interfere with your job - and, as far as I could tell, they didn't, until this last case - I overlooked it. For your sake."

"And now?" Spencer wanted to know, his eyes drifting over to Emily, sitting at her desk in the bullpen, immersed in paperwork and seemingly unconcerned about her team's sudden gathering in Hotch's office.

"Do you want me to be completely honest with you?" Hotch responded.

He nodded.

"Your relationship has compromised this team already. I can't speculate about the level to which it would do so in the future, but I am unwilling to take that chance." Hotch paused. "Both of you are exemplary agents and it pains me to say this, but there are many job opportunities elsewhere, for which I will, of course, provide an outstanding recommendation. And I will do you the courtesy of leaving it up to you."

"... of leaving what up to me?" asked Spencer, confused.

"Not just you. Both of you. I will leave it up to you to discuss this and to decide which of you will be leaving the BAU."

Spencer's heart dropped. He couldn't imagine working anywhere else. This was his family: had been long before Emily had ever arrived and - he'd always assumed - would be even if Emily ever left. But how could he ask that of her? How could he stay with his team, with _their _team, who had become so much more than just fellow agents? Who had become real, genuine friends?

When Emily walked into the room, he was so deeply immersed in his thoughts that he didn't even notice her presence until she spoke, clearing her throat as she stood next to him. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything, sir," she said to Hotch.

"Reid will fill you in," he responded, a glimmer of guilt flickering in his eyes.

"OK, well, then ... I just wanted to give you my letter of resignation."

Garcia gasped. Morgan blinked rapidly, shaking his head in confusion. Rossi smiled to himself. JJ lowered her eyes. Even Hotch seemed taken aback for a moment.

Spencer could only stare, open-mouthed, disbelieving the words he'd just heard.

"I've been recruited by Homeland Security," she explained, gesturing with her hands. "My linguistic skills are an invaluable asset to them, and they've been looking for someone fluent in several Arabic dialects for quite some time now. I'll be staying in DC, investigating home-grown terrorists, so I will still be able to see all of you. I wouldn't have it any other way."

Despite her clearly-rehearsed, professional speech, Rossi looked at her knowingly and broke into a wide grin as he remarked, "Now _that's_ true love."

"Ex-excuse me?" she stammered, visibly taken aback.

"We know about you and Spencer!" Garcia squealed, pushing through the circle surrounding Hotch's desk to envelop her in a massive hug. "And we're so happy for you!"

"Oh! I ... I don't know what to ..."

"Don't say anything," Garcia interjected excitedly. "Just promise me that we'll still have Girls' Night Out and that you'll still come to dinner at Rossi's and that you'll invite us all to the wedding ..."

"Woah, woah," Emily took a step back, raising her hands defensively. "I don't think we're there just yet ..."

Spencer blushed and tried to suppress a smile at the word 'yet.'

"Well, go on," Morgan nudged Reid. "Kiss her, you idiot."

And cautiously, with the entire team watching and despite his fear that she might push him away respond coldly to avoid displaying their relationship in such a public way, he did it. He kissed her.

Not only did Emily kiss him back, but she cupped his face in her hands and stroked his temples as their mouths opened against one another.

When they finally broke apart, she stared directly into their eyes and, unblinking, declared - loud enough for the team to hear over their raucous cheers - "I love you, Spencer Reid."

He didn't break her gaze for even a moment, avoiding the instinctual impulse to look down at his sneakers, and replied, "I love you, too, Emily Prentiss."

As the rest of the world faded into the background, a combination of all five senses and an additional, more profound sense than even Spencer himself could define, suddenly and rapidly surged through him.

It was the sense of true love.


End file.
